Ben Jervey

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Ben Jervey has been covering and working in the climate, energy, and environmental fields for a decade. He is regular contributor to DeSmogBlog. He was the original Environment Editor for GOOD Magazine, and wrote a longstanding weekly column titled “The New Ideal: Building the clean energy economy of the 21st Century and avoiding the worst fates of climate change.” He also contributes to National Geographic News, Grist, OnEarth Magazine, and many other online and print publications. His book–The Big Green Apple: Your Guide to Eco-Friendly Living in New York City–has been called the “bible of green living for NYC.” A bicycle enthusiast, Ben has ridden across the United States and through much of Europe.

As politicians from oil-producing states work to draw up bills to end the ban on oil exports, Mexican officials are “confident” that the country will soon be importing American crude through a backdoor loophole in the law.

Back in January, Mexico applied for a crude swap that, if approved, would allow the U.S. to export 100,000 barrels of oil per day to Mexico. This would be unrefined crude — refined products such as diesel and gasoline are not subject to the ban — likely from the Eagle Ford and Permian shale fields, where fracking has produced a glut of light, sweet crude in recent years.

Mexico’s landmark energy reforms are already having impacts north of the border, and nowhere more acutely than Texas. One pipeline project in particular is raising hackles in some Far West Texas communities, where residents are troubled by the prospect of hosting a pipeline that would be built for the express purpose of exporting natural gas across the border.

For the first time in 76 years, a piece of Mexico’s oil and gas infrastructure has been sold to a foreign investor, and the deal will help bring fracked gas from Texas’s Eagle Ford shale region into Mexico. In this first major deal since the country’s landmark energy reforms, Pemex—the state-owned oil company that had kept domain over the country’s vast petroleum and natural gas reserves since they were nationalized back in 1938—sold a 45-percent stake of a prospective natural gas pipeline project to the United States-based investment funds BlackRock and First Reserve.

A new campaign launched Thursday at the United Nations’ Sustainable Energy For All Forum in New York City offers a much different solution. Clean, distributed energy sources, argue the groups behind Power for All, can eliminate energy poverty more quickly and for a fraction of the cost of centralized electric grids anchored by fossil fuels. And, of course, without poisoning the air of communities and lining the atmosphere with even more greenhouse gases.

In 1998, representatives from a number of fossil fuel companies and industry front groups, led by the American Petroleum Institute, gathered to craft a plan to undermine the American public’s understanding of climate science, and submarine any chances of the United States ratifying the Kyoto Protocol.

When contacted at the time, industry representatives who were in the room claimed that the plan was “very, very tentative,” and emphasized that none of the groups represented at the meeting had officially agreed to do or fund anything further.

And over the years, whenever members of the then-called “Global Climate Science Communications Team” were asked about the plan, they have repeated that the plan was long ago abandoned.

Thanks to a bombshell investigation reported over the weekend by The New York Times, The Guardian, Inside Climate News and more, we now know that the prominent climate denialist Willie Soon, oft-cited by climate denying politicians and industry figures, calls his publications “deliverables” to his fossil fuel funders.

Even the most plugged-in climate policy experts—and many Capitol Hill politicians—were stunned.

The bilateral climate agreement—which basically says that the U.S. will cut greenhouse gas emissions by a little over one-quarter (from a baseline in 2005) by 2025, and that China will peak its emissions by 2030—was met with remarkably consistent praise.

Advocates for a strong international climate treaty liked that the bit of diplomacy took away the “waiting for China to act” argument from American naysayers.

And coming as it did in the run-up to the United Nations climate talks in Lima, Peru, the timing of the announcement invigorated the typically sputtering negotiations.

Some of the toughest criticism came from the youngest commentators. A partnership of youth from both the U.S. and China delivered their critique in the form of a joint letter to Presidents Jinping and Obama.

As first reported by Ricochet, Erin Jacobson, the recent director of communications for the NDP, Canada’s official opposition party, will be helping advise TransCanada on developing the astroturf campaign, bringing her expertise in Canadian public affairs and developing digital political campaigns.

As revealed in documents obtained by Greenpeace (reported Monday on DeSmogBlog), TransCanada hired Edelman, the world’s largest PR company, to create a “grassroots advocacy” campaign to help push the oilsands crude pipeline through the eastern provinces to New Brunswick.

A document prepared by Edelman for TransCanada, titled “Grassroots Advocacy Vision Document,” dated May 15, 2014, lists Jacobson as “Canadian program lead,” and explains that she “will join the Energy East team to provide Canadian-specific advocacy counsel.”

Google, said Schmidt, “should not be aligned with such people,” and announced that the company would not renew its membership in ALEC. Within a week, Facebook, Yahoo, Uber, and Lyft all followed suit. On Monday, AOL joined the march away from ALEC. (Yelp had allowed its membership to expire months prior, and proudly announced that week that it had severed all ties with ALEC.)

And then there’s eBay.

The online auction house is still a dues-paying member of ALEC, and is sending mixed messages to climate campaigners and the site's users and shareholders about its future with ALEC.

A rep from eBay sent DeSmogBlog an uncredited statement, which emphasizes that “we do not agree with ALEC on other issues, including climate change.” The statement in full:

"Fossil-fuel companies have spent millions funding anti-global-warming think tanks, purposely creating a climate of doubt around the science. DeSmogBlog is the antidote to that obfuscation." ~ BRYAN WALSH, TIME MAGAZINE